


Ten Times I Saw You

by LuckyREBD



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Inhuman, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:54:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyREBD/pseuds/LuckyREBD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time I saw you I fell in love instantly. You had a large family that was excited you were doing such interesting things for the University, even getting to travel overseas on such an important research opportunity. Your hands were warm and calloused, your eyes had wrinkles at their edges when you smiled but your skin was still smooth and young. Your hair was thick, curled and black, deep and fathomless and perfect." - Excerpt, as I cannot summary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Times I Saw You

The first time I saw you I fell in love instantly. You had a large family that was excited you were doing such interesting things for the University, even getting to travel overseas on such an important research opportunity. Your hands were warm and calloused, your eyes had wrinkles at their edges when you smiled but your skin was still smooth and young. Your hair was thick, curled and black, deep and fathomless and perfect.  
Your waistcoat fit snugly, and your shoulders were broad from boxing, as was the expected past-time and style. 

Your body bled out on a jagged point at the bottom of a sinkhole that had not been there before. The child survived, but you hadn't made it back up yourself when the ground trembled and crumbled. 

Blood stained the stone, and I could do nothing.  
I mourned. We mourned. Night Vale mourned.

I had loved you, but you had barely known me.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

The second time I saw you I fell in love instantly. You had only a sister back home, and your eyes were a startling shade of green. Your hair was longer, and tied back, thick and dark and wild. A graduate student, fresh out of his schooling and eager to make a name for himself even knowing the rumoured dangers. Your boots were old, ragged and worn, but you carried yourself with such dignity that I could not keep from loving you. The loss was fresh and raw, and your lips were chapped and tasted so sweet. 

But you never listened to reason, to warnings, to me.  
The blood rained and boiled from the sky, viscous tears and shattered glass. Even your boots were shredded, and I could keep nothing of you. Not even a lock of hair.

I mourned. We mourned. Night Vale mourned.

Night Vale moved on. I ached hollowly.

\----------------------------------------------------------

The third time I saw you I refused to love you. Your smile, teeth perfectly white and straight and terrifying, was something I steeled my heart against. I knew the loss would come, and I would be the one left to suffer it. I do not know what family you had. I do not know why you came. Only that you smiled, that you spoke to me, but I did not love you. Night Vale did not love you. 

You left, and I felt relief. You were safe, you had lived, and perhaps this time you would not return to here.

Night Vale moved on.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

The fourth time I saw you I fell in love instantly. It was a mistake, but I never felt so strongly with anyone else. Your arms were covered with the ghosting touch of dark hair, and your hands were strong and bore no callouses. You wore a white shirt, with the arms folded up over themselves, and the first three buttons undone. You had nieces and nephews, who were kept in delicate photographs with smiling faces and worn edges. I knew each name, each story by heart. This time, you were a writer. Novels, rich and thick with meanings and language that made my heart swell and sing. 

You listened, you were careful. Our sheets were cotton, and you had nothing to fear from being close to me. Not here. Not in Night Vale, and that delighted you. 

One day, you went home. One day, you became a statistic. Your sister cried when I returned your photographs, and I was not allowed at your funeral.

I mourned. We mourned. Night Vale had not taken you, but it had loved you.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

The fifth time I saw you I did not love you yet. I hardened my heart against you once again, but this time I could not evade my selfishness. Your smile your hair, your scars, all of it was perfect. You were alone, and with me you became something altogether different. Our fingers clenched in sheets, sweat and frantic desires.  
You did not love me, but you needed me. I convinced myself this was enough.  
It was not.  
I loved you, but Night Vale grew cold to you.  
Sometimes I wonder if you had even known what you were running from, the dropping shells and splintering earth and smell of ash. Being a soldier had not suited you. The yellow square of paper broke my heart, but you leaving had broken so much more.

The city trembled, and I mourned.

\------------------------------------------------------------

The sixth time I saw you I fell in love instantly. Your face was older, worn down from the world who did not respect you, did not value you. Your research was always published without a face, with a name that was not your own. The silver at your temples nearly touched at the back of your head, and I loved each strand with ever fiber of my being. You had no family left, you had left a broken marriage behind you, a fruitless union and a family that claimed they had no son.  
Your heart ached, and I tried to be a balm to sooth it. The way your fingertips trembled when they touched my faces.  
Someone younger, someone less broken, someone perfect, these were the things you said I should have, that you were not. So smart, but so foolish, you had always been perfect to me, and I am as ageless as you were aged.

Your eyes closed after many years, your fingers slack where they had grasped mine, and the night had taken you. 

I mourned. We mourned. Night Vale mourned.  
No one save us remembered your name.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

The seventh time I saw you I fell in love instantly. Your eyes were guarded and wary, and your heart was closed to me, and your family was truly massive and adoring. They celebrated when you married her, the woman who researched with you, and you deserved each other. She understood the things I could not, and the cities outside had jaded you to all the wonders and kindness we could provide. Your voice still reverberates in my ears, caramel and coffee, addicting and sweet and everything I couldn't have.  
Even when it was offered.

The shrapnel took you from us, and kneeling in the tacky cold of your blood she and I mourned.

\------------------------------------------------------------

The eight time I saw you, I fell in love instantly. You wore your hair long, and your pants flared at the bottom in a way that delighted me. You listened to music instead of the radio show, and your research kept all of you locked away inside your lab. Your lab is always there for you, waiting, empty and prepared. When you found out I loved you, that I had watched you and knew you, you were scared. I understood, after all, you hadn't seen me. 

You formed rules, barriers, and we became friends. Eventually you loved me, but we had wasted so much time. Too much time. Time took you from me, not slow as it had before, but swift and without goodbyes. The library had been lit with the music of your screams, and I could do nothing.

I mourned. I kept the things you had left behind, the clothes, the music, the memory.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

The ninth time I saw you I was scared to love you, but I loved you instantly. The white of your lab-coat was pristine, and your eyes did not smile. You never spoke of your family, you never spoke of much beyond your work. Interacting with the locals beyond the necessities the research dictated would compromise the integrity of the work, you said. The world outside must have been brutal, to leave your heart so hardened. Your research is important, vital, and could save the world, you said in a presentation, where we were asked to cooperate with their requests.  
And we did, because we loved you. You carried your instruments out to Radon Canyon, you used them inside the town, and the men and women who came with you shared in your excitement. Nuclear, irradiated, unidentifiable. All things you called our little community, but with no inflection or insult, just the reserved judgement of facts and data.

I hoped you succeeded, and I hoped your name would be remembered and respected for it, because I knew how much it had broken you before.  
The day you intended to leave, you kissed me, just once, desperate and unyielding. I never knew if you loved me, only that I had loved you, and my lips had tingled and ached as you left me. 

I did not mourn. We had loved you, but we had not needed you.

\------------------------------------------------------------------

The tenth time I saw you, you smiled and I fell in love instantly. I do not yet know of your family, of why you are here. I know you are a scientist, that you are devoted and forget to change out of your coat because it is almost a part of you. Your hair is perfect, and your voice is exactly the way I remember. 

When you die, I mourn, as the blood blossoms on that lab coat that you are seldom without. Night Vale mourns. I curse them, that they should take you from me again, that I cannot lose you again, that my heart is swollen and desperate and will not recover a final time.

And you are not dead.

You are alive, and you love me, and this time I will make sure we have all the time we will ever need.

I loved you, I love you. We love you. Night Vale loves you.  
And you will stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Also I have a tumblr, it has Night Vale things and art.   
> Isocil.tumblr.com


End file.
